THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS

Arvon Calling: Graphic Novels Course June 25-30

Posted: May 21, 2012

The Arvon Foundation is offering its next annual creative writing for graphic novels course in the depths of the beautiful Shropshire countryside on June 25th to 30th this year. This time around, Bryan Talbot, award-winning creator of Luther Arkwright, Tale of One Bad Rat, Alice in Sunderland and Grandville, is joined by co-tutor Hannah Berry (Britten and Brulightly, Adamtine), with Mary Talbot (Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes) as the guest speaker. There are a few spaces still available (it’s been fully booked the last two years) so, if you’d like to do it, now’s your chance! Here’s a link to the Arvon course and also to the Arvon write-up which I gave of the course on this very site, with comments from Paula Knight and Kate Greene.

 

 

Article: PG Preview for July 2012

Posted: May 20, 2012

You know, if you can look past the largely moribund and regressive side of the American comic-book market with its stale tie-in prequels and sequels (this month, they are trying to fob us off with retreads of He-Man, Eerie, The Crow, The Saint, and Bloodshot, would you believe), I think you’ll discover that we are living in amazing times for comics. Each month brings another bumper harvest of significant works, whether long-lost classics reissued, translations from all over the world, comic-art studies, biographies and monographs, or brand-new original graphic novels. I’ve picked out these diverse print publications below for your delectation, all due in July, or near enough, and spanning British comics and bandes dessinées to manga and acclaimed pieces from Quebec and The Netherlands, a last major piece by the lamented Harvey Pekar, a little-known antecedent of the graphic novel written by none other than William Burroughs, and perhaps the single most expensive item I’ve ever selected, at one thousand dollars, a limited edition six-volume set of Robert Crumb’s sketchbooks. Hopefully there’s something to tempt almost every taste, if not every pocket! Read the rest of my PG Preview here…

Article: London Super Comic Convention - A First-Year Report

Posted: May 9, 2012

The UK comic convention season is now in full swing, following last month’s first Spring Comica Comiket Independent Comics Fair in London. This coming weekend, Cambridge hosts its first dedicated festival, CamCon with some superstar guests, while the Bristol Comics Expo bounces back, after a few rather compromised years divided between two limited-entry hotels, and reoccupies the spacious Passenger Shed at Brunel’s Old Station with room enough for all.

And throughout May there are more big weekend events to come in London, from the second Kapow! Comic Convention at the Business Design Centre, Angel, on May 19th & 20th to the Institut Français’s second BD & Comics Passion Festival in South Kensington from May 24th to 27th, as well as another gigantic London MCM Expo filling ExCel in Docklands from May 25th to 27th. So, keeping in the convention spirit, here’s my report from a brand new one launched in London earlier this year. Read my new Article on the first London Super Comic Convention here…

 

Article: Napoli Comicon Report

Posted: May 6, 2012

Spotlighting the theme of ‘Comics and Literature’ symbolised by a giant typewriter (above) with panels on the keys in the entrance, the 14th Napoli Comicon in Naples, Italy made some bold changes this year which heralded significant growth for the years ahead. After being held in Castel Sant’ Elmo, a titanic castle dating back at least to 1275 and overlooking the Bay of Naples, the Comicon transferred to three massive pavilions at the Mostra d’Oltre Mare down in the main city. The castle had included huge gallery spaces and a state-of-the-art auditorium, but presented some awkward transport issues, as there is only one road leading up to the castle, and only one going back down. Otherwise it meant walking up steep hills and flights of stairs. The remote venue also cost a lot to open to the public, so for most of year it is not used now. What may have been lost in this relocation in terms of prestige historic spaces was more than made up for by the capacious exhibition halls of the Mostra d’Oltre Mare, with the bonus of a large central outdoor space for a live music stage and for the public to gather and hang out. This relocation definitely worked, attracting on the Sunday April 29th alone as many people in one day as in all four days of last year’s Comicon. Total registrations reached 50,000 visitors, a new record, making Comicon a serious rival to Lucca Comics & Games, Italy’s granddaddy of comics festivals. Read the rest of my report here…

BD & Comics Passion Returns May 24th to 27th!

Posted: May 4, 2012

After its hugely successful debut last October, once again London’s prestigious Institut Français hosts a packed, star-studded festival of comics, graphic novels and bandes dessinées, BD & Comics Passion in association with Comica Festival.

This year’s line-up spans from the wildest reaches of heroic fantasy, in the worlds of Thorgal and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, to the cutting edge of politically charged graphic novels by David B. and Guy Delisle. With nearly thirty events including live drawing, talks, exhibitions, workshops, a drawing jam with cult chanteuse Mesparrow, and a dress-up party of Victorians vs. Decadents, this innovative festival will have something for everyone! And yes, every event is in English, merci beaucoup!

Join me on the opening night, Thursday May 24th, when I will hosting from 7-8.30pm a lively Reading Group who will discuss together over a glass a wine the remarkable albums of Iranian-born Marjane Satrapi: her powerful memoir Persepolis, as well as her bittersweet family story Chicken With Plums, and her account of women’s lives Embroideries. Tickets cost £5, and right after there will be a screening of the movie adaptation of Chicken With Plums, co-directed by Satrapi and not due for cinema release in the UK. For details and booking online click over to the BD & Comics Passion What’s On webpage.

After an afternoon of book signings, highlights of Friday evening, May 25th, include the prize ceremony for the festval’s two comics competitions, a drawing duo between Guy Delisle and Tom Gauld, and Jonathan Ross being interviewed about his love for comics and bandes dessinées. Saturday May 26th is the big, big day and night with workshops, films, signings, and another drawing duo between Jean-Louis Mourier and Luke Pearson on their shared passion for trolls. Add to this presentations by Pat Mills & Kevin O’Neill, David B. on his new book Best of Enemies, and Guy Delisle, winner of the best graphic novel of the year at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, followed by a drawing jam with French singer Mesparrow and a costume ball till 2am, and you have a stunning, unmissable programme.

There’s still plenty more to enjoy on Sunday May 27th, including a further talk by David B. on his use of dreams in his comics, a Masterclass with Karrie Fransman, a workshop for digital comics on iPad, and the first ever discussion in London by Thorgal illustrator Rosinski. I will be chairing a Q&A session with Nicolas Duval, director of the forthcoming animated adaptation of Régis Loisel’s dark take on Peter Pan, opening with the UK premiere of a 13 minute sneak preview, winner of the Best Short Film Award at the Paris International Fantastic Film Festival.

And this is far from everything at BD & Comics Passion, in fact there is so much going on, how do you choose? One solution is the great innovation this year of two super-value package deals on tickets, making the festival even more affordable. The Fan Pass gets you all five main events on Saturday for only £15, while The Addict Pass entitles you to an amazing ten top events over the festival’s four days for only £25! Book early to be sure of getting these bargain offers. Looking forward to seeing lots of you there!

Article: Max - Panoptica 1973-2011

Posted: May 1, 2012

Wandering the buzzing streets of Madrid, you can’t believe your eyes at first, when you look up and spot the giant cartoon characters peering at you from behind the soaring columns outside the Cervantes Institute. It’s as if the whole front of the imposing building has been transformed into a bizarre landscape, inviting you to step inside. Panoptica 1973-2011, the exhibition within, has travelled here from Valencia and Mexico City and is scheduled next for a four-city tour of Brazil. It offers a stunning overview of nearly four decades of creativity by Max, pen-name of Francesc Capdevila, whose trajectory mirrors the shifts in the medium from clandestine counterculture to high-profile recognition. Spain has its own vibrant history of comics, or ‘tebeos’, named after TBO, the founding children’s weekly launched in 1917 whose title plays on the phrase ‘te veo’ or ‘I see you’. Born in Barcelona in 1956, Max grew up absorbing both national and imported pop culture. Vivacious humourous tebeos by Ricardo Opisso, Josep Coll, Marino Benejam and other Spanish artists, alongside the animated films of Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, Walter Lantz and Hanna-Barbara, became formative early influences, followed by his discovery of local chivalric hero, medieval knight-errant El Capitán Trueno, and translations of Tintin, Asterix and other Franco-Belgian hits. Read the rest of my new Article on Max here…

Article: PG Previews for June 2012

Posted: April 22, 2012

Hello again, welcome to another round-up of my PG Tips for up-and-coming comics, graphic novels and manga that I am looking forward to. Among the special titles are translations of top-class graphic novels from French, Danish, Italian, Japanese and Balkan comics creators. I’m particularly buzzed that The Red Diary by Teddy Kristiansen, whom I interviewed at the Komiks DK festival in Copenhagen, is finally, finally coming out in English, flip-booked with an intriguing alternate version by Steven T. Seagle. And look out for debut books by promising, precocious Anglophone tyros Kaczynski, Vidaurri, Winterhart & Zettwoch. We’ll have to see how penetrating and uncompromised a job Larry Tye makes of his new Superman biography. And I’ve picked an unpublished Steve Gerber Man-Thing story illustrated by Kevin Nowlan, as this actually sounds hopeful, certainly more so that Marvel’s latest further resurrections of supposedly dead characters and concepts, Phoenix and Captain Marvel. While some myopic publishers can’t stop latching onto Mars Attacks, Pantha, The Bionic Man, Strawberry Shortcake (errr…), or another creaky, unneeded franchise from yesterday, to foist upon us, aren’t you glad that there are people like these below, investing real passion and originality to this amazing medium.  Read my Previews picks here…

Come to the Spring Comica Comiket & After Party April 21st!

Posted: April 17, 2012

This coming Saturday April 21st, if you’re anywhere near central London, there’s really only one place to go it you love comics - the first Spring Comica Comiket Independent Comics Fair! Response to last November’s Comiket at the Bishopsgate Institute was so enthusiastic, we couldn’t wait until November this year to do it again. So we’ve added this Spring Comiket and close to one hundred artists, small presses, self-publishers and quality graphic novel publishers, from the UK but also Belgium, Denmark & France, will be filling not only the Great Hall but two additional lovely rooms nearby. We’re expanding and adding the Comica Cafe and the Panel Borders Interview Room, where you can buy tea, coffee, beer and wine and relax while listening to Alex Fitch and his colleagues from Resonance FM having some informal Comica Conversations with some of the brilliant guest comics creators at the Fair, as well as browsing more tables laden with treats and treasures. And the third new space will be the Nobrow Room, as the cutting-edge publisher presents its biggest, boldest display of its entire lines and other special imports alongside still more exciting exhibitors.

The amazing Drawing Parade line-up is all set from 11am when we open (see Luke Pearson above, from 2011), and will bring the Great Hall stage to life through the day. And best of all, admission is, insanely, entirely FREE. Why? Because we want everyone to discover just how wonderful the best, most creative comics are right now.

But hold on, it doesn’t all end at 6pm. Don’t go home - stick around, maybe grab yourself a bite, and then come back at 7pm for 7.30pm for the Comica Comiket After Party. Here’s your chance to relax and hang out with many of the day’s comics creators and exhibitors and enjoy animation screenings, DJ sessions including Mr. Woodrow Phoenix, and the all-important Comica Bar! And courtesy of SelfMadeHero, sprinkled throughout the evening will be the Lovecraft Cabaret, MC’d by Chris Lackey, host of the H.P. Lovecraft literary podcast with acts including: H.P. Ukelele; SelfMadeHero Screen: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (short film premiere); The H.P. Lovecraft Quiz with Dan Lockwood and Chris Lackey with prizes; Lovecraft Limbo with prizes; SelfMadeHero Screen: The Call of Cthulhu (short film screening); ‘Draw Something’ Lovecraft with I.N.J. Culbard; plus an extra special guest!

Tickets cost only £6, or £4 discounted tickets for exhibitors, and are available now online through Wegottickets.com, and will also be on sale during the day from the Comica table and of course on the door on the night. Bring your own tentacles! Make a whole day and night of it at Comica Comiket next Saturday, I know I will. Comica - Putting Comics First! 

Article: Tom Gauld

Posted: April 15, 2012

From a rusting Gigantic Robot or bored guardians of an endless Great Wall to the Biblical giant Goliath, Tom Gauld’s comics often play with contrasts in scale, between people, objects and ideas, and “between grand, heroic ideas and small, human ordinariness”. There’s also a sweet bleakness to his locations and his humour. “I grew up in rural Aberdeenshire. We weren’t completely isolated, but a mile or so from a small village, so my brother and I spent quite a lot of time on our own playing and bickering. A few of my comics are about two male characters in a wilderness and perhaps that comes from my childhood. The scenery and weather where we lived could be quite bleak, especially in winter, as is often the case in my comics too”. You can almost hear the Highland winds whistling through his remote, dwarfing landscapes. Read the rest of my Article here… and also enjoy his brand-new two page comic (detail above), Skull Collection, created especially for Art Review magazine.

Article: Robert Crumb Interview

Posted: April 8, 2012

Forever tied to cartoon characters such as Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural, Robert Crumb is too easily pigeonholed as the sex-obsessed taboo-breaker, unchanged since his late-1960s heyday in the underground comix movement. It’s true that Crumb’s role in the iconography of America’s drug-fuelled counterculture was pivotal, yet he remained an ambivalent outsider to that era.

Now sixty-eight and living in the South of France since 1993, Crumb has long shown more multifaceted qualities, from his candid, autobiographical self-deprecation about his lusts and fetishes to his satirical puncturing of smug-liberal and conservative-reactionary tendencies. He also extols the raw vitality of past masters of blues, jazz, country and other popular music through biographical comics, CD covers, card sets and his own music-making. Not forgetting his partnership with his wife and cartooning peeress, Aline Kominsky Crumb, the pair writing and drawing themselves on the same page to commemorate their ‘dirty laundry’ (starting with the two-volume Dirty Laundry Comics series, published in 1974 and 1978, and carrying on through recent regular contributions to The New Yorker).

Crumb is also a serious, studious reader and compulsive explorer of his outer and inner life, devoting four years to adapting the Book of Genesis into comics, published in 2009. The entirety of this magnum opus is part of the first ever major museum retrospective at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, opening on April 13th and continuing till August 19th. It will bring together over 700 drawings, sketchbooks and more than 200 underground magazines, arranged chronologically around ‘Crumb’s obsessions: love, hate, fear of women, music, a raw look at the modern world and introspection’.

I caught up with Crumb in his Paris apartment, the night before he was due to fly with his wife to a comics convention in New Delhi at the country’s second Comic Con. Here’s the full free-flowing interview, parts of which were edited and published in Art Review 58, April 2012 with a new one-page comic by Crumb and Kominsky, published in English for the first time and shown below. Read the rest of my Article and this interview here…h

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